


Ghost Stories

by okapi



Series: Spooky & Kooky (the Halloween fics) [7]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Community: spook_me, Gen, Ghosts, M/M, Shipwrecks, Storytelling, Suicidal Thoughts, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:35:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Holmes, Watson, and Colonel Hayter (of "The Reigate Squires") tell ghost stories by the fire.ACD. For the LJ Spook Me Ficathon.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Small Hobbit](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Small_Hobbit/pseuds/Small_Hobbit) for the beta.
> 
> Reference to the real-life case of the shipwrecked [_Zebrina_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebrina_\(ship\)).

“It is a good night for telling ghost stories,” said Colonel Hayter. In the firelight he gave the appearance of a spectre himself, drawn and grey and, if my calculations were correct, nearing his eightieth year.

“You speak as if you have one in mind,” said Holmes. His was the encouraging, but rehearsed tone that I recognised from the many client interviews he had conducted over the years in our shared Baker Street rooms. Fire, indeed, all the elements, had been kind to Holmes; with his head turned toward our guest and his famous profile bathed in a hearth-glow, he looked just as he had two lifetimes ago on that fateful day that he discovered a re-agent precipitated by haemoglobin and nothing else.

There was finally a lull in the howling winds that had been rattling the window panes and battering the sides of the tiny cottage. The three of us sat before the crackling fire and spoke quietly as logs shifted, then crumbled to cinders.

“Please, regale us, Colonel,” said I, “for the night is long and I have no wish to sleep.”

He smiled a toothy smile, and I caught the fleeting impression of skull beneath paper-thin skin. “Like most ghost stories, this one isn’t mine,” he said. “It is the story of a young man who arrived at my home some years ago seeking respite for shattered nerves.  He was, in that respect, not unlike you, Mister Holmes, at our first meeting.”

I recalled the interesting puzzle that Holmes and I had found—or, better stated, that had found us—amongst the Colonel’s neighbors near Reigate in Surrey. The case had proved much more restorative to Holmes’s depressed spirit and weakened constitution than my anticipated restful ‘week of spring time in the country.’

Hayter cleared his throat with a positively ghoulish gargle, then launched into his tale.

“The young man was a sailor. And the only survivor of the _Zebrina_.”

My eyebrows rose. Holmes’s did not.

“There were survivors?” I said. “The newspapers said that the ship was completely abandoned when she was found beached on French shores.”

Hayter nodded. “That was the official story. The _Zebrina_ was a flat-bottomed schooner hauling coal between Cornwall and France. The French coast guard found her undamaged but crewless. The simple explanation was that a German U-boat captured everyone aboard, then the Royal Navy destroyed the U-boat—or some other fatal catastrophe befell it—before the enemy had an opportunity to torpedo the vessel.”

“But the ship’s logs were found undisturbed,” said Holmes. “The Germans usually seized such books as proof of their successes.”

“Indeed. And even if the rumours were true and the _Zebrina_ had actually been a Q-ship, that is, a merchant ship purposefully armed to draw enemy fire, the Germans would’ve still taken the logs—if it were possible. Official reports gave the crew of the _Zebrina_ as totaling five men. Wrong. There were six. At the very last minute, my young friend joined them on their tragic journey.”

“And what did the sixth man say was the cause of the _Zebrina_ ’s misfortune?” I prompted.

Hayter leaned forward. His eyes were round, his face pale.

 “Ghosts,” he declared.

I did not laugh as readily or as heartily as I might have, for no sooner was the word uttered than a cold draft swept through the room.

Even the fire shivered.

“The captain was an evil, godless man of an evil and godless crew, but my young friend, eager to flee a miserable home life, accepted the meager wage the scoundrel offered without question. Dry land was a memory when he realised his mistake. Captain and crew were, in their former lives, pirates. They’d cut many a man’s throat before entering into the coal-shuttling business. They’d stolen cargo and treasure, and even violated a mermaid princess to whom they’d pledged their eternal devotion for sparing their lives during a brutal storm.”

As fanciful as it was, I found myself sinking into the tale.

“My young friend said that on the night his shipmates disappeared, the moon was full and the waters were still as glass. He heard an odd rumbling that seemed to come from everywhere at once. The other five crewmen must’ve heard it too, for they soon appeared on deck with puzzled expressions. Then they all heard a _thump-thump-thump…_ ”

I leaned forward and held my breath.

“…then they swarmed,” said Hayter.

“Who or what swarmed?” asked Holmes.

“A skeleton navy. My friend believed they were the reanimated remains of all the sailors who’d met their ends at the hands of those five ruffians. They were legion, crawling over the edge of the boat, advancing from all sides. Walking bones, they were adorned with barnacles and bits of ocean floor debris. They waggled their jaws and moaned in a Babel of foreign tongues. They extended their bony arms and grabbed at the men with fingers like spindle-wheel spiders. The crew huddled together, quaking in fear.”

“My young friend broke through the ranks of the dead—receiving a long, deep gash on his forearm as he struggled—and scurried below deck, but not before he saw his shipmates being carried away, one by one, like sacks of flour. There was a loud, wet plop. He counted four more as he cowered in his bunk, whimpering prayers and weeping like a babe.

“The ghosts did not come for him?” I asked.

Hayter shook his head. “Upon hearing no sound above for hours, he crept above deck and found it devoid of man or spectre. There was, indeed, not one sign that anything or anyone had passed, save for a single piece of mangled sail.”

“The poor lad was quickly struck with a new fear. What now? He was too overwhelmed and frankly too unskilled a sailor to do much, so he hid below deck and waited until the ship ran ashore by itself. Then he skittered away before anyone approached.”

I exhaled a long, ragged breath; then a thought occurred. “But mightn’t the young man, or even the whole crew, been under the spell of a powerful drug? He might have imagined the whole thing. And his shipmates, being more wicked, might have taken a heartier dose and fallen overboard. Do you remember the devil’s foot?” I asked Holmes.

“I certainly do, my dear man,” he said with a smile. “And well done. I see that age has not withered your faculties.”

I admit that his praise still made my heart skip a beat. He’d not offered any before an audience, even of one, in quite some time.

Hayter gave a nod. “You may be right, Doctor, but I will say this:  I saw the scar on his arm with my own eyes and he swore that e’er he set foot near a body of briny waters, it burned with a pain so fierce it brought tears to his eyes and made him cry out for his dear departed Mamá. I felt the heat of the wound myself once before he bid me farewell.”

I watched the fire, then declared, “A fine old tale from a fine old soldier.”

Trimmed in ribbons of light and shadow, my two companions’ smiles hung in the air like Commedia dell’arte masks.

“Have you a tale, Mister Holmes?” asked Colonel Hayter. “A fine old soldier has nothing on a world famous detective.”

“Well, we tangled with a vampire once, didn’t we, Watson?”

I nodded. “We also exposed a demon hound.”

Holmes hummed. “But I fear that the only genuine ghost story that I have is, like yours, Colonel, not my own, but rather my brother’s. In another respect, however, it differs completely. Where yours was fantastical, mine is completely prosaic, so unremarkable as to be banal.”

I laughed heartily. “Where in Heavens did Mycroft see a ghost?”

“Where else, my good man?” said Holmes with a smirk. “The Diogenes Club.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by "The Ghost of Dr. Harris" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which is reported to have been inspired by events in the author's life.

“Mycroft saw Reverend Hollow, an elderly clergyman from Dorchester, every afternoon at the Diogenes Club. He was there, in the same chair, reading the same periodical, when Mycroft arrived at a quarter to five and still there when Mycroft left at twenty to eight. They never spoke, save for a curt but cordial exchange when the Reverend was first admitted as a member; nevertheless, Mycroft held him in as much esteem as he did any of the other shy misanthropes there.”

“One afternoon, Mycroft learned that the Reverend had died. He thought the news curious because he had just seen the clergyman the day before and he’d appeared no less healthy than was the norm for a man of his advanced years. Mycroft thought nothing more of it until he had settled in his customary spot with his customary stack of evening papers.He looked up, and, to his astonishment, there was the Reverend! Alarmed, he glanced about, but, of course, it is rare for members to make eye contact. Mycroft stared, thinking it a mere trick of light, but then the apparition lifted its head.

Holmes looked up. “Watson, are you cold?”

I glanced down, then laughed at being caught so thoroughly absorbed that I hadn’t noticed the blanket slipping from my lap. Whether fact or fiction, Holmes’s storytelling could still hold me spellbound.

“And your rapt attention still thoroughly charms, my dear man,” said he, reading my thoughts, as was, also, ever his way.

I was warm, so I let the blanket remain where it had fallen.

“Go on,” I urged.

Holmes did so.

“Mycroft said he had never felt a more penetrating gaze.”

“Did he approach the figure?” asked Colonel Hayter.

“No, he went back to reading. That next day he made discrete inquiries and confirmed that the Reverend had indeed died. When he continued to see the old man at the club, he made even more discrete inquiries and could find no one who would admit to noticing anything strange. Finally, after two weeks, the club leaders voted to extend membership to a new candidate, filling the vacancy. A decision was also taken to move the chair that the Reverend favoured to a more unused portion of the club and to install a new chair in that particular spot.”

“Mycroft went to his usual place at his usual time, but he could not resist lifting his eyes to the chair—the old chair, for they had not yet carried out their plans—and meeting the gaze of the apparition once more. And there, in the ghost’s eyes, he saw not just grief, but profound sorrow. He saw helplessness and hopelessness. He saw appeal and plea and wistfulness as thick as fog. Those were his precise words.”

“How could he withstand it?” I breathed, feeling the weight of the melancholy described pressing down on my own chest.

Holmes shrugged and, by way of explanation, said simply, “Mycroft.”

“He never saw the ghost again, did he,” said Colonel Hayter.

Holmes shook his head. “But the experience stayed with him until his dying day, which was when he recounted it to me.”

At these words, my sadness burst into petty peevishness. “You know I am still cross about that, Holmes.”

“Watson.”

We had had this argument before, but I wished to have it again.

“We share rooms for years, you never mention any family. Then suddenly, I learn of a brother. Decades later, but just as suddenly, I learn of his death!”

“As I have said, it was during your first bout with pneumonia. I had no desire to disturb you with such dark news. I greatly feared it would affect your recovery. As it was, you were so weak that you barely noticed my absence!”

I winced at ‘first,’ for I had suffered two more bouts of serious illness since then, the latest being only in the week prior. In truth, today was the first day I had felt my strength somewhat restored. I let the argument expire once more.

“That’s my story,” said Holmes with finality.Then he and Hayter turned their heads.

“Well, I suppose it falls to me now,” I said, glancing at the fire and wondering briefly if I should add another log, but then thinking better of it.

“I have two. The first is for Holmes and I to tell together.” I shot him a knowing look, and he nodded, just as knowingly.

“And the second I’ve never told a living soul, but I will share with you, my good friends, tonight.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were inspired by the classic ghost story "Oh, Whistle, And I'll Come To You, My Lad" by M. R. James.

“It was after I returned alone from Switzerland but before Mary took grievously ill. I was,” I chose my words carefully, “in a dark place. I packed a small bag and told Mary that I was going to a medical conference in Edinburgh.”

“I took the first train that caught my fancy and ended up in Burnstow on the East Coast. I checked myself into the Globe Inn, which had been recommended to me by a fellow passenger on the train. He said that most of the lodging-houses were shut up for the winter. As it was, the only room available was furnished with two beds.”

“I took a walk on the beach in afternoon and saw something half-buried in the sand. I picked it up and washed it in the tide and found it to be a whistle. Well, I couldn’t resist.”

“It made a low, mournful trill. And no sooner had I lowered it from my lips than the temperature dropped. I slipped the instrument in my pocket and hurried back to the inn.”

“Upon my return, I set the whistle beside my flask and candle on the table and went about cleaning my gun. The sun set. I lit the candle. Much like tonight, the winds became tremendous gusts that threatened to snap off the window-fastenings.”

“My gun was ready, but I still had not decided on a note. To Mary, of course. No words came. I grasped my gun in my hand and extinguished the candle. Then I sat on the edge of one bed facing the other.”

“And on a whim, I decided to blow the whistle once more. This time I blew very softly. It sounded like the cry of a distant train.”

I turned my head. “And then I saw him, as clearly as I see him now, lying on his side on the bed before me. He opened his mouth...”


	4. Chapter 4

Holmes smiled. “…and said, ‘Wait.’”

“My travels had taken me to Tibet where I’d met a lama of astounding powers of concentration. My deductions seemed like parlour tricks by comparison. At once, with his permission, I became his student and we resided for a short period in adjacent caves high in the Himalayas. He said that if one sank deep enough into one’s soul, the world of separateness dissolved. All was one. I made a bit of progress under his tutelage, but soon found myself frustrated. He said the secret was to not allow my life force to trickle out like streams, but to keep it unified, focused, purposeful.”

“So I decided to meditate on Watson, my friend whom I missed more than life itself.”

“My progress improved until early one morning, something shifted. I no longer felt my own body. I was everywhere and nowhere and then I was somewhere, somewhere that looked very much like a guest room in an English inn. I saw Watson in his shirt-sleeves and I saw the gun. And, in that moment, I pooled every bit of myself, body, mind, spirit, soul, into one word. Wait.”

I gave a nod. “I set the gun and the whistle beside me on the bed and just stared at him, fearful he might disappear at any moment.”

“I wanted to reach him,” said Holmes, his voice strained. “To touch him, however, faintly, briefly. To give him hope, love, mercy, whatever gift required, continue on his path.”

I said, “He reached out his hand. I leaned forward. His fingers brushed mine, and I felt this….”

“Peace,” said Holmes, closing his eyes.

“That passeth all understanding,” I said. “I fell to the floor between us and wept, spending every long-guarded tear. When I looked up, he was gone.”

“I came back to myself in the cave and quickly lit a lamp," said Holmes. "The palm of my hand was wet. Saline to taste, but whether they were Watson’s tears or mine, I do not know. I bid my teacher farewell the next day and resumed my efforts to dismantle Moriarty’s web.”

“I lit the candle and noted the bedding was mussed, just as if his long, lean corporal form had rested there, but there was no sign of him. At dawn, I braved the fierce winds and angry tide and launched the whistle back into the sea. Then I took the first train back to London.”

The Colonel rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Were that this dry old fossil had tears to shed, gentlemen, yours is a beautiful tale.”

I smiled. “As extraordinary as it is, Colonel. I have one more that surpasses it. It is so fantastical that I will not blame you if you deem it pure fiction. But it is mine to tell, and so I will tell it.”

“By all means,” said the Colonel. “We’ve heard of ships and clubs and whistle and inns.”

“My story is about a train.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by "The Midnight El" by Robert Weinberg.

“My mother died on a September morning. That afternoon my brother and I journeyed to an abandoned train station some distance for our home in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the ghost train that was said to ferry the newly departed to the next life. The stories varied. Some said it collected at dusk, others at midnight.”

“Darkness fell. We waited. Harry grew restless and left. I stayed and fell asleep tucked beneath the edge of what was once the platform.”

“I woke to footsteps. At first I did not think it was her. The shadowy figure wore a dress of rich brocade and a hat with feathered trim, finery that, to my child’s narrow recollection, my mother had never known. But she turned her head at the whistle, and the profile was unmistakable. I fought the urge—and fought it hard—to call out to her.”

“The train approached. Like her, it was shadowy, shimmery, blacker than black and smokier than smoke, but a train, nevertheless. I dropped back beneath the platform as it pulled into the station, which was nothing more than a crumble of bricks and splintered wood and weed-covered tracks. I did not see her board, but I heard a scream.”

“Harry,” whispered Holmes.

I nodded. “I peeked out, just in time to see her turn. Her face contorted in agony, and she extended her hand in the direction of his cry. Before Harry could reach her, a thick uniform-clad sleeve snaked around her waist and pulled her into the car.”

“I saw three other passengers in the windows. Their expressions were lifeless, a grey mix of fatigue and boredom and resignation, but not hers. Her face was pressed to the glass. And she looked lonely, lonelier than a child should know is possible.”

“The train pulled away, and Harry’s shrieks drowned in a long, mournful trill.”

“Did you go back?” asked Colonel Hayter.                                                                                       

“Yes, Harry and I returned more than once to that spot, but we never saw the train again. And I never spoke of it, probably because Harry spoke of it enough for both of us, especially when he’d been drinking. I wasn’t the least surprised when they told me where his body had been found. I suspect that toward the very end of his life he slept more between train tracks than in a bed.”

“I put it out of my mind until later. There is, at times, a great deal of waiting in the care of the dying. Such was the case with Mary. One day, I recalled an abandoned tube station that Holmes and I had discovered on one of his cases; it had seemed familiar at the time of discovery and was situated, I realised after much reflection, quite near our residence.”

“I slipped away the night of Mary’s death. Nothing frightened me at that point. Holmes was gone. Mary was gone.” I shook my head. “Were I a client telling my tale in the Baker Street sitting room, I would have admonished myself severely for foolishness, crawling about in the filthy dark like a rat! I lit match after match until I came to an opening. A long ladder led down to the platform. I looked down and gasped.”

“It was teeming.”

“But from above, I couldn’t pick out Mary from the multitude of the waiting dead. They looked like troops of phantom ants.”

“A long whistle. Vibrations. I removed my boots and chose my moment carefully. The train arrived. Doors opened. The crowd oozed inside the cars. I began my silent descent with boots tied together and thrown over my shoulder. All spectral eyes were on the train; none drifted, as far as I know, to the end of the platform.”

“Just as the doors closed, I slipped onto the train and took the last vacant seat in the rearmost car. As any earthly train would, it jerked, lurched, swayed, rumbled. Without turning my head, I searched for Mary. We passed into a tunnel, and then all was black. The train stopped abruptly.”

“ _Thump-thump-thump_.”

“He appeared in the aisle. An enormous walking statue in heavy boots. Stone-face. Leaden movements. His eyes shone with a gold light and so did the pocket watch that hung from his uniform.”

“’You do not belong here, Doctor Watson,’ he boomed. ‘Your time is not for years and years.’”

“’You know my name and the instant of my death?’”

He huffed, not unlike the way Holmes had when I tried my hand at the deduction. ‘It’s my job. But don’t ask when it is. I am not permitted by the terms of my contract to impart that knowledge to any living creature ahead of schedule, so to speak.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Seven minutes to the next station. You must exit there and return home.’”

“’And if I don’t?’”

“’I appeal to your sense of compassion, Doctor. A living soul on the train of the dead, it is disturbing.’”

“My mother’s anguish was real, but so was her loneliness.”

“’No,’ I protested. ‘My Mary is here.’ I scanned the backs of phantom heads. ‘I wish to travel with her. It is unfair, cruel for her to travel alone.’”

“’Life is unfair and cruel, or so I’ve been told many, many times.’ The corner of his mouth twitched and I was reminded of Holmes once more. He glanced again at his watch. ‘I have many stops to make tonight, Doctor. Long arguments are costly.’”

“’Then let’s stop talking,’ I growled and launched myself at him. My punches and jabs hit ether; then he became solid mass and grabbed me by the throat and held me high until I stopped flailing.”

“’You are a spirited one, I will say that,’ he said. ‘Sherlock Holmes and your dear Mary.” He hummed and dragged those golden ~~orb~~ orbs across my face. “Both wise in their choice of companion.’”

“’You know Sherlock Holmes? Of course you do.’”

“’I am an admirer,’ he said with a smile. Then his face fell. ‘Doctor. It’s time for you to leave.’”

“’Wait!” I cried. ‘At least tell me the moment that Holmes died, so that I may remember him, twice a day as I will at Mary’s hour. You said that you can’t foretell the moment of death, but surely you can tell me…’”

“His eyes dimmed, and he shook his head. ‘He chose _very_ well. Give him my regards.’ And with that, I was back on the platform, in the dark, with my boots still draped over my shoulder. And not too long after that, I was opening my morning paper and reading about the shocking murder of the Honourable Ronald Adair.”


	6. Chapter 6

“And the rest of the story, the world knows. Well, that’s it. Laugh. Mock. Scoff. You cannot express any words or sentiment that I have not thrown at myself over the years, but I swear that every word is the truth.”

I glanced from Holmes to Hayter.

They did not laugh. Or mock. Or scoff.

A look passed between them.  

They knew something that I did not.

Suddenly, I was afraid.

Outside, the winds surged.

Holmes spoke quickly. “You are correct. He is an admirer, so much so that he challenged me to a game of riddles. Spying Colonel Hayter among the passengers, I proposed a wager. The Conductor accepted. I won, much to his dismay.”

The fire was almost out, but I was not cold.

“W-w-what did you win?” I asked.

“A day’s reprieve. For myself and for your old friend. So that we might,” his voice broke, “travel together.”

Colonel Hayter leaned forward and smiled and said genially, “Traveling alone is a lonely business, Doctor. Better to travel with friends, and best to travel with the best of friends.”

I began to shake.

The winds crescendoed to a howl and beat the panes with a single fist.

_Let me in. Let me in._

Holmes closed the distance between us and took my hands in his.

“Watson.”

And I heard it as I had heard the word ‘wait’ all those years ago, not from his moving lips, but from inside myself.

A grey-eyed gaze, as soft and as impish as a kitten, met mine. Then he said,

“Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.”

A clock chimed.

And then I was not afraid. Not afraid in the least.

I nodded and let Holmes help me to my feet as the last ember turned to ash and the winds fused into a single, mournful, distant trill.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
